Table 1.

Cytology of normal hepatocytes and bile duct epithelium.

	Hepatocytes	Bile duct epithelium
Arrangement	Singly, 2-dimensional small to large clusters, trabeculae of 2 to 3 cells layer thick	Picket fences with nuclear palisading, monolayered honeycomb sheets
Cells	Polygonal to round	Cuboidal to columnar
Cytoplasm	Abundant dense granular* to vacuolated (lipid/glycogen), pigments (lipofusin, bile, or hemosiderin)	Scant, pale
Nuclei
Round, centrally located, intranuclear cytoplasmic inclusions, nuclear clearing binucleation	Uniform, small, round, more condensed chromatin
Nucleoli	Prominent	Inconspicuous

*: cytoplasm appears red-orange, orange-brown, or blue green with Papanicolaou stain, and dark blue with Diff-Quik stain.